The challenge of having a road racing team and a motocross team (all while continuing to be a leader in the nascent industry of electric motorcycles) is going to be apparent this weekend. These two tracks are approximately 450 miles apart. It is likely that Brian Wismann, Director of Product Development at Brammo, will be at the TTXGP event, as he has been a driving force behind the Empulse RR racebike development. The bike will be ridden by Steve Atlas of Motorcycle-USA.com.

It’s not clear who will be the motocross team manager, although Dave Harvey, a long-time Brammo technician, is likely to be front and center, given his love for the dirt. The Brammo Engage, announced last week, will be racing with its innovative 6-speed transmission. Hopefully, the larger track at Glen Helen will allow the bike to show the benefits of a transmission – something that the small track at the MiniMoto event last weekend seemed to limit.

Keep watching this space for news about whether video feeds will be available for either of the events.

My Brammo-centric obsessive compulsive disorder is working overtime this morning. I just saw this tweet from JCAMJames, who happens to work at JCAM (in Hong Kong, I think):

JCAM is the distributor of Segways and other electric vehicles in Singapore and Hong Kong, and is owned by Jackie Chan, who is in possession of some specially-modified Brammo Enertias he plans to abuse in an upcoming movie, Chinese Zodiac.

Of course, I started wondering about the significance of Macau and November, and a quick search revealed that November 18 – 21, 2010, is the weekend of the Macau Grand Prix. According to the official website:

No mention of any electric motorcycle race there (or on the TTXGP site or the FIM ePower site). But the schedule of the event for Sunday, the 21st, states:

13:45 – 14:45 Special Event

“Special Event”? Is it too OCD of me to notice that JCAMJAMES and the Macau GP folks used the same words?

If you answered “yes,” then you’ll love this: On the Provisional Entry List of riders, is #66 – Mark Buckley. Buckley was the rider of the Brammo Enertia TTR Race Bike that finished third in the inaugural TTXGP on the Isle of Man in June 2009. Maybe it’s just another coincidence.

That’s me. When Brammo announced it was going to be giving an Enertia to the Brammo Evangelist of the Year, people began telling me that I was a shoo-in. But being the type of guy who has his finger on the pulse of Brammo and can usually predict the news from Ashland before it gets published, the announcement took me by surprise. Because of that, I actually suspected they had other plans, such as giving it to a celebrity. Was Jay Leno getting yet another Enertia? Maybe they were going for the teen girl market and would be sending it to Robert Pattinson. Or perhaps they wanted to capture the aging baby boomer market and wanted to award one to Adam West.

My fears were unfounded. I’m getting an Enertia and I feel like the king of the World.

The fact that I found all of this out while hanging out with the TTXGP crowd at Infineon Raceway at the first race of the electric motorcycle series was both fitting and, admittedly, somewhat distracting. I wanted to grab folks there and say, “Dude! I’m getting an Enertia!” I did get a chance to grab at least one person and tell her this. Chelsea Sexton, star of stage and screen:

To me, this honor, this gift, doesn’t mean that the job is done. I’m not going to shut down the blog, park the bike in my garage, and disappear into oblivion. The Enertia is just my newest companion on the journey of getting the word out about the Brammo in particular and electric vehicles in general. As Azhar Hussain said to me this weekend, “we can’t keep burning things up to get around the planet.”

You’ll be hearing a lot about my new bike. Frankly, you’ll probably get sick of seeing pictures of it and reading stories about it, but I also think a few of you (hopefully, more than a few) decide to take the next step with me and become an owner of one. Join us on the Brammo Owners Forum and lets make each other sick with pics, videos and stories. Let’s get advice from Brian Wismann of Brammo on how to take care of our bikes (a job that is magnitudes easier than maintaining an I.C.E. bike).

Prepare yourselves, fellow Brammo Fans, for the next step of the journey.

I’ll be leaving my Brammofan Hat at home, but I’ll be at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California, for the TTXGP race. Even though my beloved Brammo Racing Team won’t be there, I heard a rumor that Best Buy is bringing their traveling roadshow of electric vehicles to the track. If they don’t include the Brammo Enertia in that collection, you should still drop by their tent because you’ll likely see me delivering a buttload of shame upon the hapless blueshirts of Best Buy.

For the most part, I’ll be hanging with my homies at the TTXGP VIP tent, thanks to my association with the TTXGP Technical Rules Wiki. And I’ll be at the Werkstatt Fundraising Party that is scheduled for Friday night at 7:30 at the San Francisco Motorcycle Club. If you’re one of the loyal minions, drop by and chat me up. John Adamo, a/k/a @skadamo, blogger at Plugbike.com, should be close by, so there’s that added value.

Motorcycle.com has published a lengthy and detailed examination of the electric motorcycle industry featuring Brammo, Zero, and Electric Motorsports. The “Electric Motorcycle Primer” touches on many issues: battery development, electrical grid integrity, and practicality of these bikes, to name just a few of the subjects scrutinized.

In my constant attempt to balance my personal responsibility of chronicling everything-Brammo, with the respect for the rights of others to get all the web hits they are entitled to, I’ll just pull one great anecdote that Brammo CEO, Craig Bramscher, told the reporter:

Bramscher told about a man who’d never ridden but bought an Enertia. One day when he went out for a burger, he was approached by a little kid who asked, “Hey, are you a motorcycle rider?”

The rider had bought a helmet and a motorcycle jacket and looked the part, but he told Bramscher, it only dawned on him when he answered, “Yeah, yeah, I am.”

It was then that the rider realized, “Hey I’m in the club now, even if it’s a neophyte, a junior,” Bramscher says.

“I think if a motorcyclist can think back to when they were [new] in the club,” Bramscher says, “they have to open their heart at least to electric motorcycles.”

Whether he and others selling electric motorcycles are right, time will tell.

This article needs to be on your “must read” list if you’re a Brammo Fan, and Motorcycle.com should be on your short list of sites to watch for electric motorcycle news.